In a comparative analysis of Greek with Phoenician, Babylonian, and other Indo-European mythologies,
Littleton describes various parallels to a general theme, the kingship-of-heaven.

"In each instance a single
pattern of events is present: an existing generation of gods was preceded by
two (and in some cases three) earlier generations of supernatural beings,
each succeeding generation being presided over by a 'king of heaven' who
has usurped (or at least assumed) the power of his predecessor. Moreover
there is generally a fourth figure a monster of some sort who, acting on
behalf of the deposed 'king' presents a challenge to the final heavenly
ruler and must be overcome before the latter can assert full and perpetual
authority."(1)

Traced through the Greek
tradition, the line of succession is characterized by the overthrow of a
reigning king and father of the gods by a son whom the father has previously
exiled or sought to destroy. In the first generation, Kronos, encouraged by
his mother, leads siblings in revolt against his father, Ouranos. Kronos
emasculates Ouranos, drives him from heaven, and becomes king-of-heaven
himself. Kronos then is father to the next generation of gods, one of whom,
Zeus, eventually succeeds him in much the same manner and for similar
motives. Zeus, having overthrown Kronos, must later battle and overcome the
monster, Typhon, before the kingdom is secured. (2)

According to Velikovsky's
theory of cosmic catastrophism, such mythi­cal motifs are records of cosmic
violence and change occurring in ancient times whose original meaning has
been lost. Properly interpreted they tell of explosions, collisions,
orbital shifts, and other activity among the bodies of the solar system,
some of which had catastrophic effects on the earth. In Worlds in
Collision, which reconstructs relatively recent events associated with
Venus and Mars, the cosmic serpent episode appears as a general class of
mythical imagery stimulated by the near collision of the earth with the
proto-planet Venus and its fiery, serpentine tail. Reinforced by contiguous
global calamities, the event left a basic image in collective traditions
around the world. (3) Along the same principle, earlier motifs had already
developed from events associated chiefly with Saturn and Jupiter (Kronos and
Zeus).

In psychology, according to
Jung's observation and analysis, the cosmic monster motif is one of several
archetypal forms which frequently appear in dreams and fantasies of modern
individuals, some of whom, such as young children, seem unlikely to have
acquired the ideas or images through personal experience. Jung concluded
that the unconscious was in part collective; that instinctive trends toward
certain mental patterns had developed through adaptive evolution and
continue to function as "abor­iginal, innate, and inherited shapes of the
human mind."(4)

Freud, founder of
psychoanalysis, maintained that unconscious phenomena traced primarily to a
complex of sex instincts whose basic quality and pattern of development is
inherent in the biological nature of the individual. Freud chose the
Oedipus drama to characterize the complex he considered to be the
nucleus of human personality and cultural development.(5) For its component
elements of parricide, incest, and castration (among others) one finds
parallels in the king-of-heaven drama as well.

In relating
catastrophism to psychology and particularly to the origins for
unconscious motifs proposed by Freud and Jung, Velikovsky briefly
suggests that experiences of cosmic events may have become embedded
in the "unconscious or subconscious strata of the mind" and from
there continue to influence behavior.(6) This hypothesis implies the
inheritance of acquired characteristics and awaits experimental
proof that such psy­chological effects are possible.(') More
immediately, the idea has intriguing implications for the theories
above since, from the perspective of catastrophism, the
similarities between motifs chosen by Freud and by Jung to
characterize unconscious content and motifs of the
kingship-of-heaven myths suggest that both researchers unknowingly
encountered psychic elements stemming from ancestral experience of
cosmic catastrophes.

In this light, recent
information concerning the universal natural development in
children's art of the mandala design, a symbol identified by
Jung as a major archetypal motif of the collective unconscious,
offers a psychobiological alignment which may trace to
catastrophism. Kellogg has observed that children's art follows a
maturational course of develop­ment from early scribbling (at about
age two), through a stage of abstract forms and designs (three to
five), to culturally influenced representational drawing (school
age). During the abstract design stage, from a repertoire of basic
geometric forms and scribble patterns, the world's children tend
consistently to produce a mandala design, an upright or diagonal
cross centered in a circle. This quaternary pattern often forms the
basis for more elaborate mandala-like productions as artistic
technique becomes more complex. (Fig. 1). Kellogg explains the
phenomenon as the outcome of natural perceptual-motor development
patterns in children aided by an inherent sense for balance and
design.(8)

This explanation may
account for the maturational staging of mandala patterns in child
art but it overlooks the continued significance of the design in the
psychology of both children and adults.

Jungian psychology
identifies the mandala motif as an unconscious expression of the
collective archetype of self, "the vital center of the
personality from which the whole structural development of
consciousness stems."(9) The symbol appears in various forms in
dreams and fantasy and is most often associated with "conditions of
psychic dissociation or disorientation . . ."(10) Children produce
the mandala in "dreams and symbolic drawings of unconscious material
. . . to an unusual degree" during periods of
psychological stress.(")

Jung found the emergence of the mandala image in dreams and fantasies of
middle-aged patients consistently coincidental with a new phase of
psychic growth toward self-realization and individuation. He
attests the strength of the image in the collective unconscious by
its world­wide appearance in mythological-religious sculpture and
iconography. Jung cites the symbol of Christ and the Four
Evangelists, the vision of Ezekiel, and the "Egyptian sun-god Horus
and his four sons," as primary examples of the collective theme.
"There are, moreover, such objects as the wheel and the cross that
are known all over the world . . . Precisely what they symbolize is
still a matter for controversial speculation."(12)

Velikovsky has
indicated that the Egyptian god, Horus, was originally the name for
the planet Jupiter which "had already caused havoc in the planetary
family, the earth included," prior to the period covered in Worlds in Collision.(13) As the principal planetary god,
world­wide, during a long period of ancient history, Jupiter and its
four planet-sized satellites must have been a far more imposing
celestial figure than it is today. Assuming the same type of
collective analogy to Jupiter as the cosmic dragon to the
proto-planet Venus, the speculation offered here is that the
spontaneous artistic selection of the four-fold mandala by small
children, its collective nature in the unconscious psychology of
children and adults, and its ubiquitous appearance in the world's
religious symbols, may all trace to the common root of cataclysmic
activity associated with Horus-Jupiter. If so, activity of the
symbol in the unconscious mind could represent an example of a
collective image related to cataclysmic experience which has
demonstrable biological roots through its maturational staging in
children's art.

From this perspective,
a painting and related verbal associations pro­duced by one of
Jung's patients as part of the analytical method are of particular
interest. Figure 2 shows the general schema of the painting, one of
a series created by a 55 year-old woman who was experiencing a
period of heightened unconscious activity in the course of her
treatment. The painting shows a planet-like red and blue sphere
ringed by a wavy silver band. The contours of the band indicate a
four-fold division around the sphere, identifying the whole as a
quaternary mandala.[1]
The band was compared to the ring of Saturn but "unlike this . . .
her ring was the origin of future moons such as Jupiter possesses."
Above and to the right floats a twisting golden serpent which she
drew in "afterwards on account of certain 'reflections' " and
associated with Mercury. The patient's primary association to the
whole painting was that of a "planet in the making."(14)

If instead of
perceiving these unconscious images and associations in a wholly
symbolic way as Jung did, one allows them to represent directly a
"planet in the making"−perhaps the birth of Venus as a serpentine
comet or some earlier event involving Jupiter and Mercury as the
initial associations suggest−the whole episode may be imagined as
a collective unconscious metaphor for a Jovian event.

A single case, of
course, proves nothing in itself but the planetary references in
the patient's associations to the painting clearly are consistent
with the conjecture that mandalas in unconscious mental processes
trace back to collective memory of cosmic events. We have seen
earlier that the quaternary mandala is a common religious symbol of
ancient origins, an early Egyptian expression of which is associated
via catastrophism with Jupiter. Is it coincidence that the form
emerges spontaneously and universally in the art of young children
and continues as a dynamic motif among the symbols of unconscious
life, or has some aspect in the natural history of Jupiter left its
mark on the human mind?

Current perspectives
in American psychology lead away from theories requiring instinctual
properties in human behavior and flatly reject any assumption of
inherited, acquired characteristics. The primarily experimental,
behavioristic approach to psychology operates from the basic
assumption that learning alone is sufficient to account for the
complexities of human mental life. Yet, the preference for such a
position lies more in the general uniformitarian philosophy of
science than in the facts of empirical observation.

Given the success with
which Velikovsky has challenged the uniformitarian position,
particularly in the physical sciences, and the rate at which
evidence continues to accrue in support of the general theory of catastrophism,
one may anticipate new interest in the concept of
inherited effects of ancestral experiences. In this respect, the
potential link of catastrophism, mandala symbolism, and hereditary
maturational processes should be of heuristic value in the
development of research efforts concerning the substance of Velikovsky's psychological hypothesis.